Play-Doh: Love It or Hate It
Parenting

Play-Doh: Love it or hate it

Just like Marmite, you either love or hate Play-Doh. I have a love and hate relationship with the stuff, whilst my daughter loves it. She would quite happily play with it all day, and then I’m forever finding little bright blue balls all around the house. I’m sure that many parents would agree with me, and can see the benefits of Play-Doh, yet hate it at the same time too. So, why do I have a love hate relationship with Play-Doh.

There are obviously benefits of Play-Doh that I love:

  • It’s fun. My daughter loves playing with it. She loves to pull it apart, and make little balls with it. We’re still a long way from her making any sort of shape with it, but we’re getting there.
  • It teaches your child to create different shapes. We’ve got a Play-Doh set that contains various shape cutters, and we can make a lion, rabbit and crown, or make shapes with the lids.
  • It helps to educate your child on different colours. I’m always saying let’s play with the yellow or red Play-Doh, and then asking our daughter to pick up the yellow or red Play-Doh. It’s sort of working, and she can now say “yellow”.
  • It’s great for experiencing different textures, and letting your child play with it in their hands.
  • Linked into the point above it’s also a brilliant stress reliever for adults. I’ve found myself a couple of times playing with a ball of Play-Doh.

So that’s just a few reasons why Play-Doh is great, and there are also so many reasons why I hate it, preferring to keep it hidden away in a drawer. Here’s just a few:

  • It gets eaten. After being played with for a while, our daughter seems to like eating it. Maybe the slight salty taste has something to do with that.
  • It gets mushed into the carpet. Where possible I try to avoid letting her play with the Play-Doh in our living room or in her bedroom, to avoid little balls of red and blue Play-Doh getting mushed into the carpet. It’s a bit of a nightmare to get out, but I find leaving it to dry out works.
  • I’m paranoid that all the colours are going to become one big brown lump. My OCD creeps in when she starts playing with two colours together. She’s still too young to understand, but she tries to put the blue into the red pot, and vice versa. Hopefully once she gets an understanding of colours, it’ll be easier to avoid the colours being contaminated together.
  • It’s something that our daughter wants to play with either right before leaving for nursery, or just before bed. If I say “no” we usually end up with a massive tantrum, but I just don’t want those little red or blue balls to pick up just before leaving the house.
  • Lastly I think that the pots are more of a fascination rather than the Play-Doh itself. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve taken the lid off, for it to be put back on, and the process repeats.

I know that I’ve made Play-Doh out to be the nemisis of all toys and activities. Really it’s not that bad and is very educational. I think that our daughter is just a little too young for it still. Hopefully once she gets older, she will start to make shapes from it, instead of wanting to eat it. Maybe then, I’ll stop saying “Stop eating the Play-Doh”.

Does anyone else have this problem with Play-Doh? And messy play in general?

Claire x

This post is not affiliated or linked in any way with Play-Doh, all opinions and thoughts are my own.

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